The "in" in her search was "in a misindexed Alabama ledger, box 12, folder 7."
The river led them to an abandoned boathouse where the door hung on one hinge and pigeons had claimed the rafters. Inside, someone had taken a wall and turned it into a map—a patchwork of old photographs, sketches, and notes in Josey's handwriting. The photos were of places that did not exist in Larkspur: a street called Hummingbird Lane, a bakery named Nightlight where a blue bicycle leaned against the window, a harbor with lanterns that floated like constellations. Interspersed were tickets, receipts, and snippets of sentences Jane Austen or some other ghost might have left: "If you must run, run toward the sky." searching for josey daniels in
They found the willow on the far side of a collapsed footbridge. True to the postcard, it had three trunks—one scarred by lightning, another braided with years of ivy, and the third hollowed into a shelter. Carved into the bark, near the lowest bend, was a small picture: a paintbrush crossed over a heart. Below it, a date—March 4th—the morning Josey had last been seen. The "in" in her search was "in a